End of the road for amateurism? Blasting the NCAA has been one of the rare bipartisan activities over the past few years, and judging from the things said at the Supreme Court's hearing for the Alston case it sounds like they're about to drop a bomb on the organization:
Justice Amy Coney Barrett later questioned why the NCAA should get to decide how to define what it means for an athlete to be paid.
Several justices also expressed skepticism about the NCAA's "high-minded" claims about the importance of preserving amateurism.
Justice Elena Kagan asked why the court shouldn't see the NCAA as an organization that has undisputed power over its market and uses the idea of amateurism to fix the price of labor. Kagan said that while amateurism may have been created more than a century ago to protect an institution that provides social value, that doesn't mean that is its function today.
The above might not capture the spirit of the hearing, which is being unanimously described as a bloodbath for the NCAA.
Hard to disagree with that when even the court's most conservative members are saying stuff like this:
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said that “the antitrust laws should not be a cover for exploitation of the student-athletes,” adding that he doubted that college sports fans understood amateurism to require it.
“To pay no salaries to the workers who are making the schools billions of dollars on the theory that consumers want the schools to pay their workers nothing,” he said, seems “entirely circular and even somewhat disturbing.”
Justice Clarence Thomas noted that other participants in college sports are paid enormous sums. “It just strikes me as odd that the coaches’ salaries have ballooned,” he said, “and they’re in the amateur ranks, as are the players.”
I'm not entirely clear on what the court could do in this instance. This is the case where the previous judge said the NCAA had violated antitrust and proposed some disappointing half-measures as a remedy. I don't know if the Supreme Court can expand that to a generalized free-for-all.
[After THE JUMP: pants are featured]
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